This is a really interesting discussion. Are instances going to be just nodes into the larger network, or will they be actual communities in and of themselves?

One interesting point that was raised is that the different Mastodon or Lemmy instances are all running the same software, there’s little differentiation. I wonder if that will change?

You sort of see this happening with the Lemmy/Kbin situation. A software fork leads to 2 different development directions that are still federated with each other. That could be one way that different instances could compete for users and build local communities distinct from the larger network.

Sort of like how there’s a dozen different platforms for you to build a blog on, but they all have slightly different features. Maybe we wind up with a dozen different Mastodon or Lemmy forks?

This would result in a real reason for users to choose one instance over another beyond some shared identity. I’m skeptical if identity based instances are going to be the main pattern of organization in the future. It’s just that people tend to have multiple identities. You’re into a certain kind of music, a certain celebrity, a certain hobby, a certain genre of literature… An instance based around just one of these identities seems limiting.

I can see exceptions to this when a shared identity is much more meaningful. Like an instance for Serbians or Rwandans. These kinds of identities are much more fundamental to who we are with unique languages and shared experiences that transcends being a Taylor Swift fan.

So I could see successful instance communities developing around these kinds of strong identities and also around differentiated software experiences from forked development paths.

Then there’s 3rd party apps that might add a different layer on top of the base service. Not sure how that plays out.

This is more focussed on Mastodon, but we see the same dynamic emerge here with lemmy.world and a few others as well.

I think an important point to note is that general purpose instances tend to invite a lot more free-loaders that have no qualms to jump to another place instead of supporting their own community should the need arise. This makes the “donation funded” model for instances much harder to maintain and indeed (as mentioned in the linked text) raises the likelihood of a general purpose instance selling out to someone who thinks they can monetize the users somehow.